Community Survey about new Features - Results and futher discussion

[Karokendo]

Hello, some time ago I creates a survey and asked you about the most wanted features for boundless. We have some results and in this thread i want to discuss them with you. In the 2nd part I will talk about possible new features that may fill these less interesting parts of boundless as chopping trees or mining soil.

Survey Results

4 most wanted features from the list:

full list here

1. Farming system

It is quite interesting that this is the most wanted feature. It looks like people really want to make a farm and it may actually be a really engaging feature. I was thinking how could we make it different from minecraft’s farming system and I came up with an idea.

Plants may have different tiers. Single plant may flower up to 10 times, depends on it’s rarity.
Tier I plants: seeds of these plants are fairly easy to find. You can harvest them after 18 hours, they give you fruits you can eat.
Tier II: a little bit rarer. They grow 24h. Eating fruits grants you some bonuses like +10 to vitality, dexterity etc.
Tier III: Rare plants of different types that can be harvested for better fruits, bunch of blocks or some gleam, grow for 36 hours. They require special soil type, like they can only be planted on gleam.

Plants can be harvested only severeal times and after that they die and must be replaced with new ones.
These plants may as well decor your house.

2. Leaving messages for other players. Mailboxes and Signs

Everyone who play boundless knows how much we need Signs. Signs are ones of these features that everyone wants. Leaving messages for other players sometimes would be really helpful. Thankfully they are finally comming.

Mailboxes. They would serve community in many ways.

• You could leave a message for some random person and tell him he has nice house.
• If you had a shop you could inform others about that.
• You could tell others to check forums!
• You could advertise an upcoming event.
• As a crafter you could deleiver an item someone has paid for.

3. Exploring the land.

At this point there are only few reasons to explore plantes:

• explore to find cool place for house
• explore to find gleam
• explore to discover regions

Hidden chests would surely encourage people to explore land a little bit more. They may contain several gems, some ores, maybe even an ingridient required for forge!

Features worth developing

1. Why some players stop playing.
2. What kind of features make players entertained?

Please take in mind this is my personal opinion and i have the best intentions. Feel free to join the discussion as it will be beneficial to the thread and some conclusions may be really helpful for developers.

Why players stop playing

Why do i start this section with such title? Because it’s easy to came up with ideas for features that doesn’t change the game. Many people suggest things that would be interesting, but are totally not worth developing. I want to give you a different look at this problem.

I spent some time exploring worlds trying to find abandoned plots of players who left the game and here are my results:

• some players leave before even creating basic machines like mixer+
• some players make all the machines, build a cool house, mine some gems and them leave

First group of players who leave early:
From what i found these players find it hard to start. Skills system seems to block them from progressing. They drop the game as they don’t find it rewarding enough to take a deeper dive. Some people don’t know what to expect from it as tutorial doesn’t tell them much. I think it’s all going to improve, so we won’t discuss it.

Second group of players who stop playing much later:
I talked to many players who had their houses finished, got lots of stuff and nothing to do. These players were interested in the game, explored it a little bit. Many abandoned houses were full of machines, had nice looking chiseled interiors and 3 dead portals. You can see many players talking about the same:
“After playing a few hours beyond building a base and collecting resources, there’s not much else”

It’s understandable, boundless is in development and it’s a matter of time for more features to come.

What kind of features make players entertained?

It’s time to explain what I have in mind when i say we need features that actually bring something to the game.

• New chisels
• More decorations
• More monster tints
• Stickers

They won’t make players stay for long. I have to admit, many features of that type make game more interesting. All of these add much to do, but they are all optional features. They are not important to the gameplay. Player can choose to use them but they don’t have much impact on the game.

• You can chisel your house with 156 different angles, but after 2 hours your house is finished and you dont need it anymore. (Chisels are a major feature that brought more players to the game. I don’t deny it)
• Decorations - devs spend long time on developing them, but you as a player just place them and you’re done. Yeah, they look nice.
• Monster tints. Nobody denies how beautiful this game is. However at this point they have to developed it also takes time and typical player really doesn’t care if he kills green or orange spitter.
• Stickers, same as decorations.

Look, any of these features takes at least 2 months to develop and has little to zero impact on players experience.

What is even worse… first group of people leaves before discovering them, second is not that interested to explore it all. Typical player will rather make

a diamond square villa than use all these decorations that are planned.

When i recall Minecraft i see many bad designs, but they actually work. In Minecraft you can mine, craft, farm, tame animals, build, enchant weapons, create potions, create mechanisms, trade with villagers, explore nether, fight ender dragon etc. Minecraft has many cheap mechanisms that make players constantly busy. People always need to collect or craft something. They always need more stuff. If you take a look at Minecraft mods they expand this idea even more. You get 20 more tiers of weapons and i have to admit, progressing is entertaining.

Connecting it all together.
Minecraft didn’t focus on making things complicated and deep. It introduced many features avaiable for players from the start and is making players busy. And this is the most important aspect of the game that should be developed.

I say that again. Furniture, props, stickers are all cool. I’d love to see them in 1.0 , but In my opinion there are more important features to develop.

What features make players busy?

• Progression system - we already have that. It took me 200h to reach 50lvl. awesome
• Mining system - this is a perfect example of a perfect system that makes player busy. Congratulations Boundless, it feels really entartaining and rewarding.
• Fighting system - another great example.

What other could be introduced?

• Farming system - It is a system that really engages player into being active. You need to plant and harvest crops, find seeds, learn about different kinds of plants. It all takes time and it can be expanded to enchant other aspects of the game.
• ???

It’s up to you guys to come up with an idea of a system that is easy to develop, not complicated but entertaining.
There are many field that can be filled with interesting stuff like

• chopping trees
• mining soil
• exploring land
• different kinds of machines
• crafting equipment
• different services (taxing people for using portal hubs, renting advanced machines)
• weather system (planned)
• rare materials to collect (planned)
• and many other system that no one has invented before.

New players despite seeing the slow progression - that is required as Boundless is an MMO - will always have something to do instead. Players that have 30+ hours in boundless will still have more to do, some concepts may be expanded and adjusted to higer level players.

Tell me what you think

[Ellipses]

I think you hit a lot of major points, but as someone who heavily enjoys building I’m a bit biased towards wanting new decorations and fluff items to make my cool house feel more lived in. I might branch out from simply collecting materials and building however, if there were more things to do aside from that. At the moment the game is mostly a working concept of a fantasy society with a rad economy system, but I personally love that.

Farming would be a great system to develop as it would act as a long term mechanic to get players in the habit of logging in daily just in order to harvest and plant crops as need be, although I’d recommend making the longest growing time either 24 hours or 48, as odd hours like 36 cause odd schedules for players who have other commitments. Gatherers like me have plenty to do otherwise (with woodcutting and dirt gathering) that I think an important area to work on next would be bigger and badder mobs to draw in the combat crowd, and give it rare and useful drops so they can amass wealth in their own way(also lances but I’m sure that’s soon anyways).

[Jyanin]

That was a good read. I pretty much agree with all of it.

Myself, I prefer exploring. I’m almost “done with the game”, not in a bad way, and I’ve recommended it to people plenty. But I’m just not a big builder, I have a small airship on Munteen, a single plot room in @the-moebius’ water town, and I have my first house build with my machines and storage.

Just give me reasons to explore. I’d dump 500 skill points in jumping, moving faster and lowering mob agro distance to do it. I can spend hours mining, and infact I do. But exploring and seeing what’s out there is what I’ll be mostly waiting for. I’d love the Devs to perhaps start opening up an extra world on each leg of the server planet chain, just to see how it affects the player base. I know I’d be out there looking for everything!

Minecraft had me sink many many hours in to it and most of that is probably normal ‘staying alive’ with farming and basic house building, and then a large majority roaming around exploring

This is coming from 133hrs to now, bought on Aug 20th. I’ve probably played every day since purchase and am more than happy with that so far!

[Cookviper]

I feel this better belongs here:
Here’s my two cents. There are 6 main types of players. Every single content update falls under one of these categories.

Explorers - people who love open ended games and exploring them and finding treasures and secrets and unique builds or structures. Always expecting or hoping that if they keep exploring they’ll find something truly amazing.

Builders - people who love to build, chisel, craft, and create everything and anything. Can spend hours just working on one build and find great satisfaction with their time spent. They don’t even need to leave their immediate surroundings because they’re having so much fun simply creating.

Hunters - similar to explorers with the exception that they’re specifically looking for creatures, animals, bosses, and dungeons. They want a challenge. They could spend every gaming minute shooting things and be perfectly happy and content doing so.

Social seeker - these players aren’t as concerned with normal aspects of the game as long as they can play with and communicate with other players. It’s the social aspect they desire and are happy as long as they feel like they’re part of a community and/or team.

Merchant - this type of player is drawn to games with a detailed merchant system. They love buying and selling. Making money in game gives them enough satisfaction that every other aspect of the game is simply a bonus. They log in just to check their shop. Whether it’s for selfish prestige or providing a service to the community, the merchant absolutely loves the shop scene.

Greifer - these players are drawn to games were they can cause grief and trouble for other players. They look for ways to cheat, scam, and kill other players. They get satisfaction seeing other players suffer at their hands. They feel superior when they successfully take something away from another.

An then of course there’s the type of player, who make up the majority, that play as multiple or all of those types.

The point of this post is to request content that will satisfy as many of these types as possible. Minus the greifer. Obviously releasing content for those 5 main types is difficult to do but if possible would literally make everyone happy.

[luke-turbulenz]

Cough! Signs, soon! Cough!

[Karokendo]

I can’t even express how huge impact Signs will make on the game

[luke-turbulenz]

The comment on players staying, particularly about group 2, we only have 3 worlds and you can pretty much gather all those resources on the home world (bar gems and few others) and you can take on most creatures early on without any real skill or item investment. This is going to change!

We’ll be adding more things to gather, craft and use in the next big update but long term we need to do following:

Spread resources out into tiers and split across worlds of matching tiers, so one world doesn’t have everything you need. World 1 has stuff to get you to world 2, world 2 has stuff to help you survive on world 3 and so on and so on.

We’re also toying with introducing high level worlds which will have exclusive drops but are pretty much impossible to survive on by yourself. The creature damage update toyed with this idea and the recent weekend hunts proved this might actually be a fun “end-game” concept for players.

[Heureka]

Here are my thoughts.

As others here i sometimes feel a little frustrated and want some new things to play with.

The new skill and level system with all balancing and debugging have take a lot of resources to develop, and it is ok, it start to work fine.

What i would see next is some new worlds, maybe add the two missing tier-worlds to each server, so we got all tier worlds to play with.

As a builder i like to see some new material on those worlds, like the green, purple and orange gleam that already exist in the game, but are impossible to get now. And maybe some new material, like rare tinted marble for nice builds, a fourth wood/stone, and more stone color for bricks and refined.

Also a building problem is that some block have same look with different id, i know i have to do a lot of rebuild when new tint coming, so give each block-id a separate tint

And love the new props comming
But i have see a lot of nice props in devlogs the latest 2 years, but rarely any have get into the game yet.

As a explorer i like, as said by others, some treasure to find out in the wild now and then.
Maybe something to search for and collect, some rare object, one from each region, one from each planet.
Lot of xp when collection is completed

As a hunter i am very bad…Mostly run around and fall into holes in the ground… Have started a hunter alt to try to learn the system, but its clumsy to get stuff from my main now, lot of sanctum visits and trade-plinths organization (and checking no one else around when you put up your hard earned gods for sale for zero coin)…

But the organized Saturday hunts have been really fun, although a little confusing to try to follow it after you die (or fall in holes). Maybe after you kill all mobs in a area a big boss appear that take some time to kill.

As a trader i have not much to say, i put some surplus in my shops, and buy what i need if it is to hard work to get it myself.

As a miner i think it is the most complete area in the game so far, maybe add some findings in the sand and soil wold be fun. And add a few rares on low planets, only knowing there is a few gem hidden on the planet would do the digging a little more fun.

As a troll i want a bridge to hide under.

[Rumplypigskin]

A suggestion for new features would be trading portals. Portals that are designed for moving large amounts of crafted and raw goods but cost lots more either to run or skill points or resources to create. Now, normal portal have an imports and exports tax if you use them to move anything besides small amount of tools this way people would have the option to build one or the other or both if they have the resources and make it challenging for end game players.

I mean personally I would love to put bags on a wildstuck and herd it all the way to a city with a trading hub, fight players and/or creatures to get my wares to other planets but I don’t know how hard that would be to implement.

[Ellipses]

Is PvP planned to be included?

[luke-turbulenz]

Not for 1.0

[Jiivita]

i agree with just about everything here but here’s my 2 cents on some high impact features

agriculture / animal husbandry

alchemy / potions

equipment

rare resources from trees / plants

Agriculture
Agriculture i feel would go a long way to keep players busy and give a bigger emphasize to homes being a functioning and useful ecosystem for the player… long term i would love to see a system similar to the Regrowth mod pack for Minecraft…

Farming in Regrowth

the basic concept is that the player could gather a few basic low quality seeds from the environment to start their farm… planting required special soil prep (tilled soil, plant stakes, fertilized, and or water near by) crops over time could spread to near by compatible prepared soil with a chance for the new plant/seed having improved quality (they literally had 3 stats… growth rate, harvest yield, yield time) or something like that

further more if an empty prepared soil had 2 different plants growing next to it, there was a chance for them to cross bread to make a new crop type

later on the mod pack utilized some magical mods to take seeds and rare resources to transmute magical crops enabling the play to “grow” almost any resource (diamonds metals etc)

so in short this system gave the player a lengthy progression system for growing really cool crops

now im not suggesting that gems and metals should be farm-able but the cross breading and improving the quality of your crops would be awesome and crops could have a change to produce rare products! Not to mention this could give explorers an opportunity to find rare seeds on the many different planets XD

animal husbandry… not always my cup of tea and could be expensive on sever/system resources having a lot of animals around but i know some really enjoy it so… another option here would be each player be allowed 1-3 pets that could act as mounts and have their own levels, equipment.

further more they could be fed resources/crops to produce special products (fertilizers, milk, eggs, feathers, furs/fibers, etc) depending on the type of pet and what was fed to them. this could also allow for a sort of recycle mechanic where the player could dump unwanted resources and have their pet turn it into something more useful ^^ (who knows what a hopper would be willing to eat XD… im guessing rocks, leaves, sap, tallow, and more o.o)

obviously this is a bit complex so it could be a long term goal… for the time being a much simpler system could go a long way for players… however i know the devs generally avoid placing such systems that are “just good enough”

Alchemy
agriculture and alchemy in my mind just go together. Potions could be use for any number of things… healing, stamina restore, and short/medium/long-term buffs for reduced wear on tools, movement speed boosts, jump height, environmental resistances, and many more… also with the planed: “Forge” that will allow customizing tools/weapons… special salves/potions could be used as ingredients creating interdependence between different disciplines and promote trade.

Equipment
speaking of weapons and tools and their impending customization through the forge… the same would be awesome for armor, rings, trinkets etc that could be ether craft-able and or obtained from titans. beyond providing protection they could also do cool things like emit light, stat bonuses, improved running/jumping/harvesting/mining etc… this would allow for even more customizing of characters and progression (busy busy) obviously the best gear would need substantial time investment giving players long term progression/goals beyond hitting max lvl and obtaining gem tools/weapons

Trees, Plants, and other rare resources
As others have said… mining is just about perfect/complete… more to mine is always welcome and better however what about the surface of the planet?! there is a lot of real estate there to harvest! just as you can find ore & coal in rock… why not have the same randomly place resources embedded in trees/leaves/plants? (want some berries? find the leaves with berries on them =P) a few things that come to mind would be amber, seeds, rare woods, essences, herbs, fruit, and bugs etc to be used for alchemy, crafting, Forging, and agriculture. this could also give explorers more things to do / look for =)

the devs have mentioned that they plan to add many more things to harvest but randomized resources embedded in trees/plants would make gathering these things more rewarding and exciting w/o giving griefers the opportunity to claim rare resources (like what has happened with the red gleam flags)

[Rumplypigskin]

I want a pig farm!!! Bacon and ham anyone!

[Karokendo]

I just want to add my 2 cents about alchemy… I remember when enchanting and alchemy was added to minecraft. And it was that day when Minecraft ended for me. It was only worse from this moment. I once asked players from my high pop server i owned and most people didn’t like it at all

[Stretchious]

But that was MC’s implementation of alchemy. I never really used alchemy all that much in MC, but from the couple potions that I did use, like fire resist and healing potions, I thought they were pretty good.

What specifically did you and the people you asked, not like about it?

[Jiivita]

i’ll have to admit… i agree with you about the alchemy in Minecraft… i personally hated and ignored it… but i did like alchemy in other games like WoW… the main thing i didn’t like about MC’s system was all the non-stack-able inventory nightmares it introduced… lack luster effects… and wonky crafting method

if done right, i feel alchemy could be quite nice in Boundless… not the mention if it’s not your cup of tea… trade for it and focus on the things you do like ^^

i guess the main questions that need to answered are

Would it add meaningful things to make / potion effects?

can it be done in a interesting (yet not annoying) fashion?

would it only add needless complexity and addition steps to the crafting system?

i guess my main concern would be alchemy’s effects on inventory… the right smart stack combos could address that

and

needles steps and complexity w/o meaningful results / benefits… are consumables beyond tools/weapons/healing items really needed?

[Smidge]

I think alchemy could be a great addition to the game. We can already craft healing brews in the mixer so why not extend that to include the new item drops being introduced.
I think simple brews for temporary buffs, different levels of healing, poison reduction, atmosphere protection etc. would definitely be used. It would let people who don’t have the skills explore more areas of the game, and add a new avenue for specialised crafters/traders.
As for smart-stacking, they could allow all brews to combine into a single stack. If you look at crafting components like glue, cogs, and cloth, they can all be stacked in a single smart-stack so it would definitely be possible

[Karokendo]

People didn’t like that minecraft went some weird RPG way instead on focusing on things people loved minecraft for (mining and crafting, more resources, furniture)
People didn’t like complicated alchemy system, weird potion effects and particles which were added only because of pvp.
Enchanting because it was mostly RNG, useful enchantments were rare like 1/30 lvl 30 enchantments etc.
In general that system didn’t fit and instead devs could have made something else.

[Stretchious]

Fair enough - I feel a system like that could work well in Boundless though (as @Smidge has already mentioned above)

[Karokendo]

@Jiivita @Stretchious on the other hand Terraria had awesome but little overpowered potion system. https://terraria.gamepedia.com/Alchemy_Table

I think instead of making potions that give buffs, that system should support making food dishes.
However I have nothing against simple hp/stamina potions + some other